I'm an Astronaut. NASA gave us a STRANGE list of Rules

Above all else, there’s one rule we astronauts  have to follow. We don’t talk about the First International Space Station. People forget that  one of the first things NASA screens for, are people who can follow orders. You don’t want to  know what happens to astronauts who don’t, but for our sake, we need to get the word out. The public  has to know what they’re really doing up here. It was supposed to be the best moment of  my life. The moment I had prepared for since I was a kid. As I sit here

typing  something no one is likely to read, it's the last memory I’m choosing to remember. I could still remember it all so clearly.  The view from the shuttle as we approached the International Space Station 2. It  was the second greatest sight of my life. It only comes after my first  ever look at the earth from orbit. Ever since I was small, I  wanted to be an astronaut. I grew up in DC. My dad worked in a senator’s  office as an under secretary. Mom was working for a nonprofit that provided

aid for  humanitarian missions. Dad loved museums and science centers and things like that.  I was taken to the Air and Space Museum a lot earlier than I probably should have  been. Dad always said that he knew I’d be doing something with aeronautics from the  way my three year old eyes lit up at the display pieces. From then on, both my parents  nurtured my love of flying and outer space. When I was eighteen, I went into the Air Force.  I got my mechanics license, studied aeronautics, and beca

me an engineer by twenty four.  I was getting ready to work for Boeing or Airbus straight after graduation. But then  I received a letter that changed everything. It was from NASA. They wanted me to come work  on the brand new International Space Station 2. I was speechless. I went over the letter a  million times, trying to believe what I’m reading. It was a dream come true. I called them  immediately and told them I would be honored. I spent the next year getting ready to go to  space. I thoug

ht that Boot Camp was the toughest thing I’d ever have to go through. It was way  worse than the engineering degree for sure. But none of that prepared me for the training I  had to do to go to space. There were simulations in zero G, training with the space shuttle  controls, and a rigorous exercise routine. I wasn’t there alone either. NASA had sixty  candidates competing for forty spots. But I was told that as long as I passed all the  tests, one of those spots was mine. The head of the progr

am was an old Airman himself, and he  was eager to get the “right people” in the sky. I wasn’t blind to the clear nepotism at work.  But I couldn’t deny that I was still excited. Fourteen months, two weeks, and six days later, I was strapped into a shuttle with the first  eight that would be going up. By that point, going through the launch sequence was second  nature. As we launched ourselves out of the earth's atmosphere and towards the stars, it  felt like something I’ve done my whole life. A

nd when I got my first look at my new home for  the next two years, I knew I was where I belonged. The ISS II is larger than the first one. It’s  capable of holding four times as many crew and housing forty full time staff. It had been  operational for about five years at that point. The construction was in the works long before  the fatal disaster on the first Space Station. You could still see the ISS I out there, floating  in reverse orbit from the new station. It looked like a tugboat beside

an ocean liner compared  to the ISS II. The crew of the second station had been cannibalizing it for parts from what  I heard. But they were very careful about what they took and how deep into the station they went.  No one was quite sure why. Details of the salvage operation were a closely guarded secret known  only to the head of the Station - Captain Shaw. The only thing most people knew was that something  had happened on the ISS I that resulted in the death of nine crewman. It was an incid

ent the  upper brass weren’t interested in repeating, especially when the death toll could  be much higher on the new station. As we docked, I couldn’t help but watch as the sad old relic drifted by. I wondered if  someday, someone would look at the station I was now entering and see  nothing but a pile of broken metal. Captain Shaw met us in the hangar as we  disembarked. He was a middle aged man. His hair was a blizzard of salt and pepper  sculpted into a high tight flat top. He surveyed us cr

itically from between a  pair of officers in security uniforms. He seemed to approve of what he saw for  the most part. He looked like a hundred other higher ups I had seen in my time in the  service. It was comforting in it’s own way, if that makes any sense. He was a known  quantity and I could work with that. The captain then cleared his throat and  addressed us in his big booming voice. “Good to have you all aboard. I am Captain  Charles Shaw, and you will all be serving under me for your to

ur of duty here on the International  Space Station Two. This station currently houses twenty. And when the forty of you who passed the  screening process get settled in, we will be fully staffed. Some of you will belong to the engineer  corps, under Chief Engineer Roberts. Some of you will work under Doctor Williams in the Science  Corps. A few of you will work security under me personally. But no matter where you work, you  should consider yourselves one team and one family. We are all here to

help each other and  to ensure the safety of this great station. So, Engineers, follow the arrows to your left, science  staff to your right, and security staff with me.” We split off for our respective departments and  so began my first day working in the ISS II. CE Roberts is one of the best supervisors I  had ever had, and turned out to be another past airman. He was unbelievably calm,  and the fifteen of us who made up the engineering corp were proud to work under  him. He assigned us into

three-man groups, three engineers for each wing of the station.  We spent our days working like santa’s elves, trying to stay out of sight as we made the  repairs that kept the ship floating along. You would think that working on  a space station would feel odd, but it's amazing what you can get used  to. There’s simulated gravity in some of areas. They’re the pods under the  rotating rings on the end mostly, but the rest just has you free floating. I was  under the engineering corps, so most of

my job is just rigging things up and fixing consoles. We  go out every now and again to fix problems with the exterior. But space walks are harder to get  clearance for unless it's on an emergency basis. The station housed around sixty people at any  given time. We had a few more or a few less from time to time, but usually there were  thirty five members of the science team, fifteen engineers, and ten security personnel.  Why we needed so many security personnel became clear during my first we

ek. The members of the  science team were brilliant individuals, but they did get passionate about their work  occasionally. Fights were not uncommon and the security staff was constantly being called  to help settle disagreements. For our part, we mostly stayed out of sector drama. But  there were more than a few times when the engineers would be witness to some of the  more “spirited debates” from the science team. Speaking of the science team, they  were ones doing the real work. I used to lo

ve going to the Botanical Labs  to rig up different systems or work on their hydration systems. It was like stepping into a  greenhouse back on Earth, and they were always developing something new. Most of it was over my  head. My thumbs are greasy as opposed to green, but the gist of it was that they were growing  plants that would be able to survive on other planets. The focus currently was Mars. But  they were preparing for things like deep space colonization as well. The Botanical labs also 

provided most of the oxygen for the station. They were considered one of the more important sections  of the ship. One of my earliest spacewalks was to install thicker siding on that part of the  station in case of bombardment by foreign bodies. Besides the Botanical Labs, there’s Lab 2  which served as the engineering bay. This was something I was a little more experienced  in. They were working on hypothetical aircraft here. Things that could survive in space  for long periods and travel long

distances on small fuel reserves. A lot of the  science was concepts I could understand, but rarely was I asked to design an aircraft  on Earth that needed to sustain that amount of pressure. They were building some  prototypes on site. My teammates often had to pull me away so the scientists  would stop “picking my brain” for ideas. Lab 3 was Long Term Food Sustainment and  it was essentially a bunch of engineers trying to make a replicator. All of us  had grown up watching Star Trek and we kn

ew that every space ship needed a  replicator to make meals and snacks and hot earl gray tea. They were trying to  make a 3d printer for food. But it was hard to decide on a food base that would be easy  to store and replicate for long journeys. Lab 4 was focused more on Earth Problems  and had the usual think tanks for things like pollution and deforestation and  such. They were working on compounds for removing oil from sea water, solvents for  putting out wildfires. Things that seem to be pla

guing people's lives recently.  It wasn’t a lot of practical work, mostly hypothetical stuff. But  they were always hard at it. Finally, Lab 5 was deep space broadcasting,  and they seemed to need our help the most. They were trying to get something to return  one of their signals. Something to return a broadcast. They had so much equipment  in there. So much weird tech that always seemed to be breaking. And a lot of it was  older stuff that I had no idea how to fix. With all these things to loo

k after, it was no wonder that I blinked and had  suddenly been in space for six months. That was when they sent us to  the ISS I for the first time. We arrived at the start our shift and were told  that four of us needed to report to Captain Shaw’s office. He was reading some reports when the  four of us arrived. He seemed to be weighing something heavily. He kept looking up at us  as he chewed over whatever was in the report, before finally steepling his fingers and taking  us all in through t

he gap in his fingers. I felt extremely judged in that moment. And I  found myself hoping that I wasn’t in trouble. “Gentlemen,” he said, “This is an extremely  important job. It will need to be followed to the letter, and there's no wiggle room here.  You’ll be going back to the ISS I to remove three of the large dishes from the northern  face. Broadcast team needs them to replace the ones they lost to debris this morning.  Unless we salvage them from the ISS I, it could be three weeks before w

e can get a new  one up on the next shuttle. That being said, I need all four of you to follow the  rules in place for going to the station.” He raised a finger, raking us all with  his gaze as he prepared to lay it out. “One- Under no circumstances are you  to enter the ISS for ANY reason.” A second finger joined the first. “Two- Do your best not to look  at the station while you work.” A third and final finger rose. “Three- Whatever you may or may not see while  on the ISS is not to return wit

h you. It is not to be spoken of with anyone and would be best  left in the airlock when you return. Understood?” We all nodded, but it seemed  pretty weird. What was he worried that we would see? There shouldn’t be  anything to see on the space station, right? It was abandoned after the disaster and  the only thing to see there should be whatever had been left behind. The more I thought  about it, the weirder the request seemed. As we piled into the small shuttle I  expressed my concern to the

others. Besides me, there was Rob, Paddy, and Clements.  All solid guys I’d become pretty good friends with. Rob was an engineer from MIT with a  background in aeronautics like me. He was another victim of Lab 2’s intense question and  answer sessions. Paddy was retired Navy and he bragged about working on nuclear submarines back  in the day. Clements was Army but he had done a lot of battlefield engineering in warzones  and was good at rigging things up on the fly. They all just shrugged at the

question,  saying it was probably just something they told everyone. Probably had something to do with  the NDA’s we had signed before they sent us up. “At the end of the day,” Paddy said, “It’s  his show, so we gotta play by his rules.” Still, I couldn’t shake the weird feeling  as we came to the station and docked on the outside. We had about two hours before we  needed to leave. Plenty of time to do what needed doing. As we disembarked I remember  feeling a rush of excitement that tamped dow

n any uneasiness I’ve been feeling. Space walks  were always so cool. It’s hard to be anxious about anything beyond the quality of your  suit while you're floating through the void. We came hopping across the outside of the  station, probably looking silly to anything that might be watching besides us. We found  the first dish pretty easily. Paddy set to work with the torch while Rob helped him.  Meanwhile, Clements told me to follow him so we could get the second dish. It was close,  but this o

ne was near one of the observation windows. It was hard not to look inside as  we got the dish ready for removal. Behind the glass floated all sorts of discarded items.  And as they smacked silently against the pane I dragged my eyes back to the task at hand.  Clements had lit the torch and was removing the bolts that held the big dish in place. I  held onto it, not wanting it to go floating off after it was set free. But I found myself  glancing back to the window again and again. I could see a

teddy bear floating  near the glass. Its black button eyes seem to be begging me to come  and rescue it from the station. Then the first bolt went floating off into  space as Clements started on the second. A food bag danced lazily past, the cellophane  twinkling a little in the reflected light. “Put your foot down on the left side, please. It pulling against the third bolt.”  Clement said through the short range walkie. I did as I was asked, turning back to the  task at hand. The arc light mad

e me squint as he cut the third bolt free. I turned away  so I wouldn’t get a retinal burn. As I did, my gaze inevitably went back to the windows  of the station, and that was when I saw it. A gray skinned humanoid, its  eyes the color of glaciers, staring out at me from the inside  of the International Space Station. It’s eyes were no more expressive than the teddy bears had been. But they seemed to stare  right through me and leave me breathless. I screamed, but it was only  heard by me and th

e void. When the last bolt was removed, I felt  a sudden weightlessness take over as the dish that I had been leaning on suddenly came  loose. I tilted, my terror giving me momentum as I tried to flee from the blue eyed thing  behind the glass. As I began to float into the void along with the satellite dish, I  wasn’t sure I would be able to stop myself. Luckily, Clements grabbed me by  the ankle as I floated past. He yanked me and the dish back from the void. “Easy there, kid. Lose your balance

for  a second?” his voice filled with concern. I looked back at the window, wanting to  show him what I had seen. But it was gone. There was nothing there but floating garbage again. But I couldn’t help but  notice that the bear was gone too. Whatever that thing was, it had been after its  teddy. And now neither were anywhere to be found. “Kid?” Clements asked again, “You okay?” I nodded after another second  or two. I thanked him for the save and saying I must have just lost my footing. As we

returned to the ISS II with our dishes, my head was filled with the image of the  creature now. I had more questions than ever. Someone was waiting for us in the airlock when we returned. I wasn’t surprised to see  it was Riley, the Chief of Security. Riley looked more like a nightclub bouncer than a  NASA security officer. He was six and a half feet of intimidating muscle with arms that would  definitely feel cramped in your average space suit. Rumors were that he was a Marine who’d  been handp

icked by Shaw. He answered to the captain and no one else. I knew that my boss was  terrified of him. The Science Lead avoided him at all costs. Other than Shaw, it seemed that  no one was in a big hurry to interact with him. He was smiling as he blocked the door to  the airlock. But it was hard to miss his hand resting on the lever that would open the  hatch and send us all careening into space. “Successful trip?” he asked Clements,  who happened to be in the lead. “Very, we got all three dishe

s, as  ordered, and we came back early.” “Terrific,” he said, showing way too many teeth, “You guys find anything else out there?  Bring back any souvenirs, by chance?” Clements shook his head,  “Nope, again, as instructed.” “Good, good,” Riley said, still  resting his hand against the pull down, “Head to decontam and then get back to  work. We’ll have a couple of guys from Lab 5 come and get those dishes.  Can’t be too careful, after all.” He let us pass then. But I saw Clements sigh deeply whe

n he finally got  to the end of the corridor. Apparently I hadn’t been the only one  afraid that he would pull that lever. I tried to put whatever I saw  out of my mind. Really I did, but it just wouldn’t leave me. Sometimes I  would wake up with those piercing blue eyes looking at me from across the void and I would  remember it all over again. I had to know more, had to figure out what that had  been. And my first step was research. The station had a wide array of digital  media that could be

used for research purposes and work studies. But surprisingly,  there was very little info about the first International Space Station. We all knew the  story. How they had been hit by debris when a meteor collided with another passing  meteor. The trajectory threw the shards into the station. It had been sudden. The  crew had barely known what was going on, The cabin had depressurized far too  fast for evacuation to even be possible. Seven people had lost there lives that day. Three  women and

four men. Three had been Americans, two Germans, and two from Russia. As I was  flipping through the pictures of the deceased, I stopped on one of the Russians. I felt  sick as I examined his perfect blue eyes. Yuri had been a scientist studying the effects  of zero gravity on the human body. He was also the ship’s doctor. He looked miraculously  unchanged for a man who had gone through sudden decompression. Other than the graying  skin, he was the picture of health. It made me wonder how many o

thers might be in  there after they were presumed dead. Were they hiding something in the first ISS? I began quietly making inquires about  the previous crew of the ISS. But most of the information I got was vague and unreliable. Chief Engineer Roberts had known  one of the astronauts, Major Glenn. He was working on some kind of deep space  protocol or something. It was all really hush hush. But he said NASA was getting ready to  attempt manned missions out of our solar system. One of the Scient

ists in Lab  2 said that Doctor Habber had discussed a new engine with him  once when they had been research assistants at Boeing. It was supposed  to improve space flight and trip time. One of the guys in Lab 3 told me  he had been emailing with Engineer Kurst about a new compound for the food  printers. Their joint research helped push forward his current project  until the incident with the ISS I. I talked to more than a few people,  careful about the questions I asked. But I was careful not

to let the security staff  see me being nosey. I couldn’t say why, exactly, but after the little incident with Security Chief  Riley, I didn’t want falling back into his radar. But I wasn’t careful enough, it seemed. Because  one day I looked up the article about the incident and found that it had been altered to remove  the names of the deceased. A memo came out a few days later about interest in the old ISS  being counter productive to the current mission. People were suddenly a little less wi

lling to  talk to me about old times and dead friends. It was only a couple weeks later that I found  myself face to face with Riley again. I was fixing a console in Lab 5, when I looked up  to see him looming over me with a wrench in his hand. He wasn’t being threatening. But  just the sight of a hulking muscle head lightly tapping a tool against his palm was  enough to put me on edge. He was smiling too, something I wasn’t used to seeing unless there  was a chance for a fight to break out. Ril

ey was the kind of guy I could imagine petting  bunnies to death, and not by accident. “Heard you been asking some questions  about the old station, Haus.” Riley never bothered to learn peoples names. Everyone was Sport or Bud or Haus with him.  Unless you outranked him and then it was Sir. “Yeah,” I said, trying to act nonchalant  about it as I finished wiring the console. “Any particular reason?” he  continued fiddling with that wrench. “Just curious,” “Writing a book report or something?” he

asked, and I heard the wrench  come down a little harder than expected. “Why does it matter?” I asked,  getting a little tired of the game. “It matters because Captain Shaw doesn’t like it  when people look too closely at the ISS incident. He lost a lot of friends on that station, men  and women he knew well. And he doesn’t like it when people decide to pick at old wounds. You  wouldn’t want to make the cap upset, would you?” His voice never rose over a conversational tone, but the smacking of w

rench on flesh made it  pretty clear that I was being threatened. I told him I understood, and he left after that. In reality, I only want to learn more now  that I knew there was more to the story. Turned out there was a deeper mystery  here than even I was aware of. When I got back to my bunk later that day,  there was a note tucked inside the pillow. “Meet me in the east passage storage room. I have  something you might be interested in.” it read. I didn’t know who had left it, but It  had to

be one of the people who bunked here. We were the only ones with key card  access, other than security. So it had to be Rob or Mackey or Davies. I supposed  that it could be a trap by security, but why would they bother? Riley had  scared me, wouldn’t that be enough? In the end, I decided to  go out and see who it was. What did I really have to lose? The storage rooms were where we kept extra  parts and equipment that we might need for certain jobs. Wires, tools, insulation, it  was all in here

waiting for us. The storage units were not under the areas of artificial  gravity, so the bins were topped with plastic covers so they didn’t float off. It was  spooky inside the east passage storage. But as the lights came on, I found Davies  waiting for me there looking impatient. Davies was an old boot, a guy who had  been here before I arrived. He was the right hand of CE Roberts. We all liked to  joke that Davies had been waiting here for them to build the second station. But he  definitel

y knew some things when it came to the crew and the inner workings of the  compound. Some even said he had worked on the original space station before the  accident, but no one could verify it. “Heard you’d been asking some  questions about the old ISS.” he said, leaning in close as he floated toward me. He pitched his voice lower,  practically whispering, “Did you see them on the old  station when you went there?” I didn’t have to ask what he meant, I just nodded. He pressed a little notebook i

nto my hand  before floating for the door. He didn’t say anything else. But when I got back to my bunk and  started reading, I realized he didn’t need to. Inside was confirmation that I wasn’t crazy. There were others in that old  station, and that Captain Shaw knew. Davies wrote about a meteor that the station had  been studying. A meteor with some strange bacteria living in it. The crew had been experimenting  with the metal in the rock. They were taking all precautions, but accidents still ha

ppened. One of  the scientists had been exposed to the bacteria. It was Doctor Habber, and his skin had turned  gray from it. He was fine, better than ever, but they also discovered that he didn’t need  to breathe. His new skin was thicker too. Not capable of withstanding the vacuum of space  indefinitely, but he can survive exposure for quick periods of time. He also needed much  less food to sustain his body. Whatever it was, it had changed him on an evolutionary  scale, and they were fascinat

ed by it. The crew had been experimenting with this  change when they made another discovery. The bacteria was infectious. Soon they all had it. And that was when  NASA, specifically Captain Shaw, had decided to quarantine them. The accident had been to cut  them off from the rest of the world. But it also allowed NASA to experiment on the affected crew.  Now Shaw was hoping to test the limits of their affliction, and present them to the scientific  community as the crew of his new Deep Space Ex

ploration program. They would be the pioneers of  the next generation, but at the moment they were being held in the old ISS like prisoners. That was  the real reason we had to take those dishes. They were trying to get messages out to the real world,  and Shaw was having trouble keeping them quiet. The journal suggested that I destroy  the book after reading, but how could I? It was evidence of what Shaw  was doing. I thought I could keep the journal hidden until I  could somehow get the word o

ut. I carried it around with me at all times, thinking of what to do next. But  after a few weeks I got complacent. I hadn’t seen security following  me around and I hadn’t received another visit from Riley. So I  thought maybe all was forgotten. I forgot how easy it would be to get rid  of me and make it look like an accident. There was an infinite void to take advantage of. Turned out there were fates worse than that. It all a started when I came back to find Davies  missing. The story was tha

t he’d returned to Earth. Something to do with his family, but I  knew better. Davies didn’t have family on Earth, and the station was his home. I felt a knot  growing in my stomach for the rest of the day. And when I settled into bed that night, I wondered  how long it would be before they came for me too. I didn’t have long to wait. I struggled, but the hand over  my mouth was clamped down hard. I guessed my crewmates slept through my abduction. They had me in flex cuffs before I  could figure

out what was happening, but it hardly mattered. Riley had come with  two other security guys. They manhandled me as easily as they would have a toddler.  The corridors were dark as they pushed me through them. I had never questioned  how sound proof the cabins might be, but most of them likely knew better than  to mess with the security team, either. They took me down to the airlock. And I was afraid for a minute that they would  just launch me into space. Captain Shaw was waiting for  us there

. Instead of looking triumphant like I expected, he  actually looked disappointed. He sighed. “If you wanted to know  what was on the old ISS so badly, all you had to do was ask. I hope  your answers were worth it, kid.” When Riley shoved me onto the little  carrier that we used for missions to the ISS, I knew I wasn’t getting a quick death. They slid a needle into my neck before they pushed me out the door and towards  the opening to the station. I only had to gasp for a few seconds  before a g

ray hand came out to grab me, and Davies pulled me inside the rotting ISS I. Now I’m a permanent member of the  International Space Station I crew, and, I suppose, of the Deep Space Program. Hopefully after they’ve catapulted us beyond  the solar system, someone will find this console entry. I hope word gets out. People need to know  that my participation was far from voluntary. It ‘s far more likely, however, that this log will  end up in the recycling bin after I’m space dust.